Hello America,
My name is Tony Whitcomb and I am the Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I have created Expotera, as well as this Blog, to let the good, honest and hardworking Citizens of this Country know that the Revolution has now begun.
Power To The People!!

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

For two months this summer, a massive military training exercise, code-named "Operation Jade Helm," will take place is seven
Southwestern states:

Texas, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona,
and California.

Units involved include Special Forces troops from most
(if not all) military branches.

They will be rehearsing activities such as extractions,
urban camouflage, searches and seizures, etc.

Citizens are being encouraged to report suspicious activity,
ostensibly to see whether our troops are able to sufficiently
"blend in" with civilians.

The Internet is abuzz with speculation that this exercise is
designed to train U.S. military forces to seize, extract, and
control the civilian population of America.

Of course, military spokesmen deny this.

They say all of this is designed to prepare our troops
for overseas operations.

At the risk of sounding paranoid, ever since 9/11, our federal
government has targeted America's homeland for all sorts of
surveillance, spying, snooping, etc.

For the first time in U.S. history, we have U.S. Northern Command
(NORTHCOM), a full active military division (3rd Infantry Division)
assigned to the Continental United States.

We have the Department of Homeland Security, which has turned
our local and State police agencies into miniature military units
and has turned the America into the most spied-on country in the
history of the world.

The Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, NDAA, etc.,
authorize the federal government to basically treat the U.S.
citizenry as "enemy combatants."

As far as the passage of these laws in concerned, we Americans
have already lost our right to a trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, the
right to have an attorney, the right to a speedy trial, the right
to be secure in our persons, houses, effects, etc.

Martial Law may not be the experience of most U.S. citizens YET,
but understand that the laws are already in place for such an event.

Several things about this upcoming exercise bother me: why do
American military units have to practice ''blending" into the
community?

Are they not American citizens?

What do they do when they take off the uniform and go home?

How hard is for Americans to "blend in" to America?

And asking Americans to call authorities to report "suspicious"
activity: now what can go wrong with that?

We already have millions of dollars of tax payer monies paying for
advertisements telling us, "If you see something, say something."

Now let's make a game out of reporting our neighbors to
government authorities?

There was a time in this country when such an idea would
have never been tolerated.

It resembled Nazi Germany and Red Russian too much.

Then again, most of the WW II generation has passed.

Then, the whole idea of practicing "extractions" (a nice word
for kidnappings) in U.S. cities sends chills up my spine.

Using the aforementioned laws, this kind of activity could already
take place in this country.

So, first we have laws authorizing such activity, and now our
military troops are practicing doing it?

Please tell me, again, how we have nothing to worry about.

A couple of my sources inside the Special Forces community have
told me that some of the officers participating in Operation Jade
Helm are being asked to swear an oath to a foreign power.

I'm told that MANY are refusing.

Obviously, I cannot confirm any of that; but that is what I've been
told.

Many of my fellow Americans will tell me I am being overly
paranoid.

But, isn't that exactly what the citizens of every country overtaken
by its own government said?

"That can't happen here," have been the last words of millions.

In this age of government spying, police militarization, ubiquitous
laws denying the Bill of Rights, Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Corps
surveys asking Marines if they would turn their guns on the
U.S. citizenry, repeated attempted gun confiscation coming from
Washington, D.C., etc., etc., ad infinitum, I think we have a good
reason to be a little paranoid.

Dr. Chuck Baldwin is the Founder and Pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida.

Monday, March 30, 2015

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. – George Orwell

By Lily Dane
Activist Post
March 30, 2015

The late United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler is perhaps most famous for his post-retirement speech titled “War is a Racket.”

In the early 1930s, Butler presented the speech on a nationwide tour.

It was so popular that he wrote a longer version as a small book that was published in 1935.

Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists whose operations were subsidized by public funding were able to generate substantial profits essentially from mass human suffering.

The work is divided into five chapters:

War is a racket
Who makes the profits?
Who pays the bills?
How to smash this racket!
To hell with war!

It contains this summary:

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.

Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

Butler went on to say…

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict.

At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War.

That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns.

How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?

How many of them dug a trench?

How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out?

How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?

How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy?

How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious.

They just take it.

This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few — the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war.

The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting.

Newly placed gravestones.

Mangled bodies.

Shattered minds.

Broken hearts and homes.

Economic instability.

Depression and all its attendant miseries.

Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.

Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Butler also exposed the Business Plot, an alleged plan to overthrow the U.S. government.

In 1933, Butler told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialist businessmen (including individuals from General Motors, Prescott Bush, grandfather of George Bush Jr., J.P. Morgan, and the Rockefeller dynasty) were planning a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to other Fascist regimes at that time.

The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations, calling them a “gigantic hoax.”

A final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler’s testimony.

United Technologies might be the lowest ranking of the U.S. companies in this list, but don’t let that fool you.

OpenSecrets bestowed the company with the label “heavy hitter”, which means it is “one of the 140 biggest overall donors to federal elections since the 1990 election cycle, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

OpenSecrets labeled this company a “heavy hitter”, which means it is “one of the 140 biggest overall donors to federal elections since the 1990 election cycle, as compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

General Dynamics is one of the nation’s top defense contractors, assembling virtually every type of military machinery engaged in modern combat.

The company builds warships, nuclear submarines, tanks and combat jets, not to mention the command and control systems that link all of these technologies together.

The company has lobbied hard to encourage lawmakers to step up appropriations for the Navy, one of the company’s biggest clients.

It has fought attempts to shrink the nation’s fleet of submarines and warships, thereby helping block Defense Department attempts to shift that money to other facets of the nation’s land and air defenses.

Northrop Grumman is the fourth largest defense contractor and the world’s largest builder of naval vessels as of 2010.

As a member of the miscellaneous defense industry, Northrop Grumman specializes in aerospace systems, electronic systems, information systems, ship building and technical services.

Northrop Grumman focuses much of its efforts securing government defense contracts and earmarks.

During the 2008 election cycle, people and political action committees associated with Northrop Grumman contributed more than $2 million to federal candidates and committees, favoring Democrats slightly.

The total of contributions to candidates from Northrop Grumman PACs is 9 times larger than contributions from individuals.

REVOLVING DOOR: 32 out of 49 Northrop Grumman lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

6 Congressional members own shares in this company.

CEO Wesley G. Bush’s total pay package, including the change in the value of his pension, was $18.6 million in 2013, reports The Washington Post.

His salary and stock awards remained steady at about $1.5 million and $8 million, respectively.

4. Raytheon (U.S.)
Arm sales 2013: $29.9 billion, profit $2 billion

OpenSecrets has identified Raytheon as a heavy hitter:

Raytheon is a major American defense contractor that specializes in defense and homeland security technology.

As the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, Raytheon specializes in manufacturing defense systems and defense electronics.

A member of the defense electronic industry, Raytheon is most active lobbying on defense, homeland security and federal budget appropriation issues.

Until 2008, individuals and political action committees associated with Raytheon had favored Republicans in campaign contribution giving, but after Democrats won both chambers of Congress and the White House, the defense firm favors Democrats, giving 55 percent of campaign contributions to Democrats and 45 percent to Republicans in 2008

Considering that access is needed when securing large government defense contract, it’s of little surprise that Raytheon spends millions of dollars each year lobbying the federal government.

Raytheon is the primary manufacturer of Tomahawk cruise missiles, dozens of which have been used by U.S. and British military forces in strikes against targets in Libya during 2011.

The total of contributions to candidates from Boeing PACs is 6 times larger than contributions from individuals.

REVOLVING DOOR: 83 out of 115 Boeing Co lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

17 Congressional members own Boeing shares.

CEO W. James McNerney Jr. made $23,263,562 in total compensation in 2013.

Of this total $1,930,000 was received as a salary, $12,920,972 was received as a bonus, $3,763,503 was received in stock options, $3,763,534 was awarded as stock, and $885,553 came from other types of compensation.

The total of contributions to candidates from Lockheed Martin PACs is 7 times larger than contributions from individuals.

REVOLVING DOOR: 69 out of 109 Lockheed Martin lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

CEO Marillyn Hewson earned $25.16 million in 2014.

Of this total, $1.34 million was base salary, $8.16 million was stock awards, $5.98 million was from incentive plan compensation, $9.41 million was in pension earnings, and other compensation was $238,150.

****

As you can see, many companies and individuals – including politicians – stand to profit greatly from perpetual war.

And we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $312,500 for cost of military action against ISIS.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $10.17 million for cost of war in Afghanistan.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $365,297 for cost of war in Iraq.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $10.54 million for total cost of wars since 2001.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $8.43 million for Homeland Security Since 9/11.

Every hour, taxpayers in the United States are paying $58 million for the Department of Defense.

For a live ticker showing how much we have paid to date in each of the categories above, please visit the National Priorities Project site.

You also can use the site’s trade-off tool to see what else those dollars could buy.

****

The full costs of war cannot simply be measured in dollars.

It is impossible to place a monetary value on the tremendous loss of life (both military and civilian) caused by perpetual war.

Since 2003, U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan total 2,356.

UK military deaths total 453, and there have been 677 coalition military deaths from other countries.

Since 2003, U.S. military deaths in Iraq total 4,489.

UK military deaths total 179, and there have been 140 coalition military deaths from other countries.

There have been 136,495 – 154,378 documented civilian deaths that resulted from military intervention in Iraq since 2003.

In Iraq, 1,487 contractor employees have died. 348 journalists have been killed. 448 academics have died.

To view information on 6,840 U.S. service members who have perished in Afghanistan and Iraq, please see Faces of the Fallen.

Deaths don’t only occur in combat.

An unusually high percentage of young veterans have died since returning home, many as a result of drug overdose, suicide, and vehicle crashes, reports Costs of War.

The suicide rate doubled in the Army during the first decade of the wars among both the deployed and the non-deployed.

In many ways, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are worse off now than they were before U.S. military invasion.

Both countries are considered more authoritarian, more corrupt, and more repressive than they were before.

****

In his piece titled A State of Perpetual War, David A. Love makes a fitting comparison:

In the George Orwell classic 1984, there is a state of perpetual war between the nations of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.

The enemy in the conflict is ambiguous, and the battlefield exists in an elusive and distant land.

The enemy could be Eurasia one day, and Eastasia the next, but that location is really insignificant.

The mission of perpetual war for these superpowers is to justify psychological and physical control over their populations, to keep their people busy, fearful and hateful towards the enemy.

The perpetual war also serves as an excuse for a nation’s failings and shortcomings.

The economy, the labor force and industry are all centered around war rather than consumer goods.

People live a miserable existence with poverty and no hope of improving their standard of living.

Love points out that there are bigger problems we should be concerned about:

…there are many domestic threats that seem to pose a greater risk to national security, including the U.S. economic system itself.

He concludes with:

If we are to have a perpetual war, it must be a war against injustice and deprivation at home and abroad.

We need to get our own house in order, rather than demolish and rebuild other nations that did not invite us there.

And as far as the so-called terrorism problem is concerned, maybe we should stay out of other folks’ backyards and it will go away.

Indeed, the authorities would like us to believe that “fighting for our freedoms” in lands thousands of miles away is a necessary evil.

In War is a Racket, Butler suggested the following three steps to smash the war racket:

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

Butler concluded his speech with the following exclamation:

TO HELL WITH WAR!

That seems like an appropriate conclusion here as well.

Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple. Her goal is to help people to “Wake the Flock Up!”

Sunday, March 29, 2015

The racist dishonesty of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has
challenged Judaism’s humanistic principles, as many young
Jews will now flip the Passover script, putting the Palestinians
in the position of Moses demanding “Let my people go” – or
give them the vote in one state.

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
Consortiumnews.com
Sunday, March 29, 2015

What makes this year’s Passover Seders unlike any others is that
a majority of American Jews have been forced to face the fact
that Palestinians today are asking Jews what Moses asked Pharaoh:

“Let my people go.”

The Israeli elections, and subsequent support for Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s open racism and obstinate refusal to help
create a Palestinian state, is not playing well with many younger
Jews, and they will be challenging their elders to rethink their
blind support for Israeli policies.

Increasingly, young Jews are on the Moses side, and see
Netanyahu as the contemporary Pharaoh.

So at the Seder more and more Jews will be asking Israel
to “let the Palestinian people go.”

The easiest way ​for Israel ​to ​allow Palestinians their freedom is to
create a politically and economically viable Palestinian state living
in peace with Israel and based on the 1967 borders of Israel with
slight border changes to allow Israel to incorporate the settlements
in Gush Etzion and Jewish parts of Jerusalem that were built on
conquered Arab land in 1967.

The terms for that agreement were well worked out by
“The Geneva Accord” developed by former Yitzhak Rabin
aide (and Ehud Barak’s Minister of Justice) Yossi Beilin,
and would include Jerusalem serving as the capital of both
states, massive reparations to the Palestinian people to
help fund such a state (paid in part by the international
community), and joint police and military cooperation,
supplemented by international help, to deal with the
inevitable acts of terror from both Israeli and Palestinian
terrorists who would want to block any such agreement.

Though Prime Minister Netanyahu has now sought to back away
from his unequivocal election commitment in mid-March that he
would never allow Palestinians to have a separate state, it is clear
to most American Jews that he was telling the truth to his own
community when he made that commitment.

Only a fully unambiguous embrace of a detailed plan for ending the
Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, and major
unilateral acts on Israel’s part to begin to implement the creation
of a Palestinian state, would be believed by any Palestinians at this
point.

And who can blame them?

But Netanyahu, like Pharaoh, has a hardened heart.

Like Pharaoh’s dealings with Moses, he is likely to make statements
seeking to appease the people he holds in bondage on the West
Bank and Gaza, but when it comes to actions, he will give little
but token steps that are not close to the freedom the Palestinian
people rightly ask for themselves.

In a tragic reversal, we who had been oppressed now oppress, as
though the psychological dynamic of the victim identifying with
the oppressor is now playing out in a way that brings dishonor to
the revolutionary vision of freedom that the Jewish people brought
to the world and have celebrated for at least 2,000 years as central
to Judaism.

Not that we had no warning — our Torah explicitly repeats over
and over versions of the following theme:

“When you come into land, do not oppress the stranger/other,
remember that you were the stranger/other in the Land of Egypt.”

Given this reality, many Jews, and a disproportionately larger
number of young Jews, will be asking a provocative question at
their Seder tables:

“If Israel won’t let the Palestinian people have their own state,
then don’t we have to insist that the Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza be given the vote?"

“After 45 years of Occupation and subordination to the Israeli
government, Israel can no longer claim to be a democratic society
while denying the vote to those Palestinians who live under Occupation."

“If West Bank Palestinians and Gazans are not allowed the same
rights as Jews living next door to them in West Bank settlements,
how can we pretend that Israel is not acting as an oppressor and
forsaking any claim to be a democracy?”

The call for “One Person, One Vote” has a strong resonance with
the American people and with most people on the planet.

It may even resonate with many Israelis who have memories of
what it was like to live in societies that did not give Jews equal
rights.

But for other Israelis, that demand might be the one thing that
would open them up to the need for the immediate creation of
a separate Palestinian state.

Fearful that giving Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the same
rights already given to Palestinians living within the pre-’67 borders
of Israel might give Palestinians real power to influence the
outcome of elections, they might respond in the same panic that
led Netanyahu to scare Israelis that they had better get out to vote
because Israeli Palestinians were already going to the polls in large
numbers.

The Palestinian Authority might find that adopting the demand
for “​One Person, One Vote”​ might be the most powerful way
to get the two states they’ve unsuccessfully sought up till now.

In my view, two states are preferable to trying a forced marriage
between two peoples that have so much mutual suspicion – they
need a clean divorce, not a shotgun wedding!

But since Israel won’t give that divorce any other way, the demand
for a fair marriage is better than Palestinians remaining a de facto
slave to Israeli​ fears and Israeli power.

Passover Seders are all about asking important questions — this
year, many American Jews are likely to be asking how Jews can
celebrate our own freedom without insisting that Israel “Let their
people go” or at least give them the vote!

Many younger Jews are good at sniffing out hypocrisy, and they may
be causing a heated debate at any Seder that avoids this question.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, chair of the interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives, www.spiritualprogressives.org and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without Walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, California.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Our own progress against racism in the United States remains too
recent, too fragile, and too incomplete to go on abetting apartheid
in Israel.

By Phyllis Bennis
Anti War.com
March 26, 2015

The last days of the campaign sounded an awful lot like the Jim
Crow South, when African Americans had officially won the right
to vote but still faced massive discrimination.

On election morning, a powerful white official running for
re-election urged his followers to get out and vote, warning
that minority voters were turning out in large numbers – and
those trouble-making civil rights agitators, he complained,
were busing them to the polls.

But this wasn’t Mississippi or Alabama circa 1965.

It was Israel in 2015.

And the candidate wasn’t some protégé of Bull Connor or
George Wallace shouting into a bullhorn.

It was Israel’s prime minister writing on his Facebook page.

Naked Racism

The leader of Washington’s closest Middle East ally – the storied
“only democracy in the Middle East” – was pushing his right-wing
supporters to get out and vote. “The right-wing government is
in danger,” he warned, because – in his words – “Arab voters are
coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are
busing them out.”

The language aimed to frighten right-wing Israeli Jewish voters with
the specter of a large turnout among the Palestinians who make up
20 percent of Israeli citizens.

The gambit brought back to Netanyahu’s Likud Party the far-right
voters who otherwise might have voted for one of the even more
extreme right-wing parties.

It worked.

Likud trumped its challengers from the right as well as the left,
and Netanyahu swept to victory.

Of course, there were other ploys to reach extreme-right voters
as well.

Netanyahu’s last-minute promise that he would oppose the creation
of a Palestinian state – seemingly reversing a position he’d laid out
several years earlier – may have been shocking to many in the
United States.

But it was actually consistent with the prime minister’s
longstanding behavior.

As far back as 2001, Netanyahu bragged that he “actually stopped
the Oslo Accord,” the diplomatic framework that was supposed to
give rise to a Palestinian state.

For the last six years, with one brief and ineffectual freeze,
Netanyahu has led successive Israeli governments in building new
settlements in the West Bank, “Judaizing” occupied Arab East
Jerusalem, and attacking Gaza with brutal and illegal force – all
with the intended effect of derailing any possibility of even a rump
Palestinian state, let alone one that would be independent, viable,
and contiguous.

Netanyahu attempted to dial back his reversal after the election.

But given the prime minister’s consistent opposition to ending
the occupation, President Obama should reject that lie.

Rethinking Old Assumptions

Indeed, the challenge for the Obama administration now is not
how to rebuild its frayed relationship with Netanyahu, or even
its relationship with Israel writ large.

That relationship has been way too special for far too long,
and it needs to be brought down to normal size.

In the past few years, we’ve seen Israel continue to act in violation
of human rights, in violation of international law, and in direct
contravention of the very values that it claims to share with the
United States – unless those values happen to concern a continuing
legacy of racism toward indigenous peoples and others outside the
majority demographic.

Unfortunately, those violations were just ratified – again – by
Israeli voters

Obama’s challenge, then, is to craft an entirely new approach
to dealing with Tel Aviv.

It’s time to rethink the old assumptions, driven by pro-Israel lobbies and by outdated Cold War strategies, that called for providing Israel with uncritical support, diplomatic impunity, guaranteed military protection, and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military aid.

Those have been the key features of the U.S.-Israeli relationship
for at least 48 years, and they have failed.

They’ve failed to bring Israel’s nuclear arsenal under international inspection or to make Israel sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

They’ve failed to bring about an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, its rejection of the Palestinians’ internationally guaranteed right of return, or its discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.

They’ve failed to encourage an Israel that respects human rights and accepts equality for all as an essential national goal.

As Obama considers the possibility – so long in coming – of reducing its diplomatic protection of Israel at the United Nations and elsewhere, his administration should keep in mind that litany of failures.

The US relationship with Israel has sustained and cosseted an overarmed, nuclearized state that not only expropriates and occupies other peoples’ lands and deprives 20 percent of its own citizens of crucial national rights, but has also worked deliberately to derail US and international negotiations with Iran.

The United States can no longer welcome Israeli leaders who rely on openly racist provocations to win votes in support of apartheid policies or foolish wars.

A Normal Relationship

It’s time for an entirely new connection – one based not on a “special relationship,” but on the normal ties Washington shares with most other countries.

A normal relationship means reconsidering why US taxpayers send $3.1 billion to Israel every year – that’s 55 percent of all US military aid – when Israel, according to the IMF, is the 25th wealthiest country in the world.

It means asking why we don’t enforce the Leahy Law, which prohibits sending arms to any military unit known to commit human rights violations, when even the State Department’s own annual reports document patterns of Israeli violations.

It means replacing our current “we-will-protect-Israel-no-matter-what-it-does” strategy with a new commitment to reaching a solution between Israelis and Palestinians based on human rights, international law, and equality for all.

A normal relationship, in short, means ending US complicity in Israel’s violations.

Our own progress against racism in the United States remains too recent, too fragile, and too incomplete to allow our government to provide support to those relying on racist appeals to win elections abroad – especially when they include the leader of the U.S.-armed, U.S.-funded, and U.S.-protected “only democracy” in the Middle East.

Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Last week you were revealed as the first Israeli prime minister
to tell the truth.

For at least 25 years most Israeli statesmen have been lying,
misleading the world, the Israelis and themselves, until Netanyahu
arose – he of all statesmen – and told the truth.

If only this truth had been told by an Israeli prime minister 25 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, when the occupation was born.

Still, better late than never.

The public rewarded him for this truth, and Netanyahu
was elected for a fourth term.

Netanyahu said last week that if he were to be reelected,
a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch.

Plain and simple, loud and clear.

This simple, pure truth was the case for all his predecessors as well all the prime ministers, peace lovers and justice seekers from the
center and the left, who gave false promises.

But who thought to admit it before him?

Who had the courage to reveal the truth?

The latest of these deceivers was Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog:

His daring plan included five years of negotiations. The public
rewarded him for that.

After all, one had to deceive the Americans, bluff the Europeans
and cheat the Palestinians, fudge things for the Mideast Quartet
and lie to some Israelis.

One also had to play for time, to build settlements and get rid of
every possible Palestinian partner – Yasser Arafat, who was too
strong; President Mahmoud Abbas, who is too weak; and Hamas,
which is too extreme.

One has to play for time, so the Palestinians become more extreme
and everyone understands that there’s no one to talk to.

Now comes the man who is considered a bluffer, and only he
tells the fateful, historic truth: there will be no Palestinian
state.

In Israel, there was not one single prime minister – including
the two Nobel Peace Prize laureates – who intended for one
second to let a Palestinian state be established.

But the bluff of the century was convenient for everyone.

Now Netanyahu has put an end to it.

If Israel had played its cards openly from the outset, as Netanyahu
has done now, perhaps we would be in a different place, a better
place.

If only Israel had told the truth: that it covets the occupied
territory for itself and will never give it up; that hundreds
of thousands of Jews are living there and it has no intention
of evacuating them; that it does not care about international
law, and cares nothing for what the whole world thinks; that
the Palestinians have no rights there; that Abraham our patriarch
is buried there; that Rachel our matriarch weeps there; that
Israel’s security depends on it, and that the Holocaust is at the
door.

The reasons are many and varied, and they all say one thing
now and forever, from Hebron to Jenin.

Yes to autonomy, to self-administration, to village leagues
or a Palestinian Authority.

But no to a state. Never.

If an honest leader like Netanyahu had arisen years ago,
we Israelis would have known, the Palestinians would have
known, and so would the whole world: it will not be.

Then it would have been possible to deal with other solutions,
instead of wasting time cheating, time in which hatred only grew
and blood spilled for nothing.

We could have begun long ago to think of alternatives to
the two-state solution – and there’s only one: one state.

And we could have begun debating what regime it would
have and there are only two: democracy or apartheid.

Instead, we were misled.

Now Benjamin Netanyahu has come and put an end to all this.

We must be grateful to him for this.

History will remember that he was the first Israeli prime minister
to speak the truth.

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist, writing opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on
the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Netanyahu Deserves the Israeli People, and They Deserve Him if after everything, the Israeli phoenix succeeded in rising from the ashes and getting reelected, something is truly broken, possibly beyond repair.

The first conclusion that arose just minutes after the announcement of the exit polls was particularly discouraging: The nation must be replaced.

Not another election for the country's leadership, but general elections to choose a new Israeli people – immediately.

The country urgently needs that.

It won’t be able to stand another term for Benjamin Netanyahu, who emerged as the man who will form the next government.

If after six years of nothing, if after six years of sowing fear and anxiety, hatred and despair, this is the nation's choice, then it is very ill indeed.

If after everything that has been revealed in recent months, if after everything that has been written and said, if after all this, the Israeli phoenix succeeded in rising from the ashes and getting reelected, if after all this the Israeli people chose him to lead for another four years, something is truly broken, possibly beyond repair.

Netanyahu deserves the Israeli people and they deserve him.

The results are indicative of the direction the country is headed:

A significant proportion of Israelis has finally grown detached from reality.

This is the result of years' worth of brainwashing and incitement.

These Israelis voted for the man who will lead the United States to adopt harsh measures against Israel, for the man whom the world long ago grew sick of.

They voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech; now he has torn off his mask and disavowed those words once and for all.

Israel said "yes" to the man who said "no" to a Palestinian state.

Dear Likud voters, what the hell do you say "yes" to?

Another 50 years of occupation and ostracism?

Do you really believe in that?

On Tuesday the foundations were laid for the apartheid state that is to come.

If Netanyahu succeeds in forming the next government in his spirit and image, then the two-state solution will finally be buried and the struggle over the character of a bi-national state will begin.

If Netanyahu is the next prime minister, then Israel has not only divorced the peace process, but also the world.

Piss off, dear world, we're on our own.

Please don't interfere, we're asleep, the people are with Netanyahu.

The Palestinians can warm the benches at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, the Israel boycotters can swing into high gear and Gaza can wait for the next cruel attack by the Israeli army.

The battle for all these has yet to be officially decided.

The next prime minister will be crowned by Moshe Kahlon and the heads of other small parties.

At the time of this writing, Kahlon has yet to declare his intention.

The ball is in these parties' court; they will decide if Netanyahu continues.

Most of them despise him, but it's doubtful whether they will have the courage to turn their backs on the public.

That will be their test.

That will be the test of their courage and integrity.

Moshe Kahlon and Aryeh Dery, do you truly believe Netanyahu is better than Isaac Herzog for the society and social welfare you purport to care for?

Does the country's decent and courageous president, Reuven Rivlin, believe Netanyahu will be a better prime minister than Herzog?

There is a lot resting on his shoulders now – but the fact that a figure like Netanyahu and a party like Likud succeeded in maintaining power as the country's leading faction already says a great deal.

Netanyahu is threatening to surpass David Ben-Gurion as Israel's longest running leader.

He is already in second place, and yet it's hard to think of one significant achievement on his part.

The list of damage he has done is long.

But he is the nation's, or much of the nation's, chosen one.

That choice must be respected, even if it makes it difficult to hope for a good outcome.

The only consolation is that another Netanyahu term will prompt the world to act.

That possibility is our only refuge.

Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist, writing opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz that often focus on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

More and more, education is entertaining children to think of
themselves as part of a group.

This is one basic way to cut off the consciousness of being an
individual and what it really means.

The government, the State, has now become the beneficent leader
of The Group, and if you need confirmation, just ask any politician.
He’ll give you a sound bite or two.

People enmeshed in the current culture don’t realize that, as
recently as 25 years ago, the promotion of America as One Group
played like a faint tune in the far distance.

Now, it’s being urged by the State with wall-to-wall rhetoric
straight out of some cheesy TV church; and the pastor-hustler is
taking in contributions with one hand while doling out bribes with
the other.

Only he’s got militarized police all over the land and an awesome
surveillance apparatus to back him up.

But he loves you. He really cares.

And suckers from Maine to Chula Vista are buying in. Count on the
brief appearance of some messianic figure in the Presidential
Primaries who will try to out-Obama, Obama, if only as a keynote
speaker at a convention.

Behind the freebies and the “we’re all in this together” lurks,
however, the same monolithic State, obsessed with control.

Domination.

The Individual is the target. The objective?

Convincing people that conceiving of themselves as distinct from
the herd is a delusional, outmoded, cruel, psychotic, hopeless act.

“You’re against The Group. You don’t care about humanity.
You reject the force that is trying to bring aid to everyone
everywhere: that force is government.”

This is part of the con. The hustler’s larger role involves strolling
up to his mark and purring in his ear, making promises, offering
sympathy.

It’s ancient.

It’s all about “we” and “us” and “everybody” and “humanity” and
“the people.” It’s syrup poured on the innocent and the confused.

The Left argues that the mega-corporations are in charge.

The Right argues it’s government.

As Robert Anton Wilson once wrote: “They’re both right.”

The Corporate State, looked at from any angle, is in the business
of reducing the individual to undifferentiated mush.

The technocratic wet dream of hooking 10 billion brains to a super-
computer, and thus giving birth to “enlightened consciousness,” is
the pseudoscientific version of a collective utopia.

The “right answers” to all questions are fed back down a
pipeline into every mind.

But it turns out there is the right to be wrong, which is to say,
the individual has the freedom to dissent from any and all
groups.

He can think, and act on what he thinks, without consulting
a manual.

He can perceive reality on his own terms.

He can go further and invent realities.

He can oppose the mob and the machine.

If none of this ignites a spark in his mind, he can lie down
and wait for the steamroller.

Somehow, the most diehard advocates of the State ignore
American foreign policy: war, wholesale destruction.

They studiously develop amnesia on that front.

They don’t bother trying to probe the personality of a government that professes to solve the problems of 300 million people at home, when that government pursues perpetual war abroad.

“…when he [the independent individual] merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.” (Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority, 1974)

“We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity — it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity — an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.” (William H Whyte, Jr.)

Replacing individual values with group values invokes a formula: “the greatest good for the greatest number of people.”

This is magnetically attractive for the young on two counts.

One, it seems to involve a simple rational calculation.

And two, it spreads “the good” around like jam to “everyone.”

Of course, it’s a total con.

Who decides what the greatest good is, in any given situation?

And who enforces it with laws and guns and courts and prisons?

“If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak…Instead—she did not know why—they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)

The Group does not move forward, it devolves.

It reverts back to primitive impulses, while justifying its so-called principles as instruments of the highest order.

“One egg, one embryo, one adult—normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress… ‘Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!’ The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. ‘You really know where you are. For the first time in history.’ He quoted the planetary motto. ‘Community, Identity, Stability.’ Grand words. ‘If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved.’” (Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932)

Yes, the perfect Group.

Humans made in hatcheries, according to plan.

Group identity replacing individual identity.

The All of the All.

Why bother with individual achievement?

Why bother with “thoughts that separate one person from another?”

Why-can’t-we-just-get-along becomes: why can’t we all think the same thoughts?

We can, with enough generations of programming.

With synthetic production lines in birth-hatcheries.

Greatest good for the greatest number becomes a
different kind of number.

For those who don’t want to take things that far, there are less radical versions of The Collective Glob in the propaganda mall.

From the mystical to the political, there is a whole range
of messages.

They all include the word “we”.

For some reason, I never signed up for that “we.”

Maybe you didn’t either. This article is for you.

Jon Rappoport was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for
private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal
creative power.

Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative
reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.

Friday, March 13, 2015

It seems that you just don’t know when it is appropriate to blurt out your opinions.

This is consistent with you.

You always have to steal the moment from others who work equally as hard for their recognition.

And you assume and expect everyone else to be aligned with your personal opinions.

You smack other artists in the face if they don’t fit your personal definition of an artist.

You’re like a spoiled child in a grown man’s body who is ready to set off a boiling temper tantrum the very moment you don’t get all the things you want.

I bet your wife is subconsciously fed up with raising a little boy for a husband, and I am sure your mother would have been so proud of your behavior.

Can I ask you something?

Would she have stood beside you and your wife’s decision, you know, to break the Internet with Kim’s full nude photos?

There’s nothing wrong with sacrificing your morality for a little bit of extra income and attention.

Am I correct?

You seem comfortable with your wife as she continues to milk society’s attention with their own controllable obsession with sex.

A woman who skates through life with the praise and worship fueled by the leak of a sex tape on the Internet.

Really Mr. West?

Is this the best you could do with so many talented, artistic women across countries?

By approving this irresponsible behavior, you are accepting the reality that one day your daughter will face the repercussions of this photo with classmates in school.

You also are condoning this to the young girls who follow Kim on Twitter and witnessed her success as she continuously rises to fame and stardom using her body. What a fantastic moral to spread, right?

Well, there’s an upbringing that would make every mother
leap for joy.

After all, what’s wrong with teaching teenage girls that society actually rewards you for posing nude.

Let’s just influence the whole country to embrace perversity.

That’s a good way to lead society, as if it wasn’t bad enough already.

What a great idea you can teach your daughter.

Why not take it further?

Why don’t we get a family portrait of all of your
greasy bottoms for the whole word to see?

That would gain you a ton of attention.

You can use it to promote your new shoes.

That would be genius.

And you can post a picture update each year and set the
new standard for family values and business marketing.

Ah, yes, your mother would have loved it.

I’m sure she would have jumped right in the picture for her
own close-up.

Oh, Mr. West, I’m sure she would have been delighted with
the both of you.

I bet even Jesus himself would be proud to walk with you.

My, you’ve changed so much since your humble beginnings,
but you’ve never once been humble.

You’ve always been egocentric.

You see, Mr. West, we once had a great deal of respect for you.

We admired your art, creativity, original vision, and non-conformity in your work, but now Anonymous has targeted you now with this message because you disgrace what we stand for.

When you self-proclaim to be a modern Renaissance prodigy in your radio and TV interviews, with such an obnoxious history, it pisses us off.

We watch the things you say and the way you depict yourself.

You are not anywhere even close to the status to any of our
brothers and sisters who made the Renaissance period what
it was.

I think it’s time to awaken from your insanity, Mr. West.In reality,
you’re not a Renaissance man, you’re just a new slave that the
industry uses to help keep the population in a cycle of stupidity
and distraction.

Yes, you are an artist, but your example is still no different from the rest of Hollywood’s figures.

Just programming the American news to center all their attention on sex and material growth.

The historical men who made the Renaissance are impactful,
had actually done things to revolutionize the way we think
and understand our world.

Many of them were sentenced to death because they dared to tell the truth and stood up to the powers who used fear to repress the truth from the people.

You, on the other hand, have changed nothing.

Yes, we acknowledge all your talent, Mr. West, but we also
acknowledge that you have a large voice, bank loads of money,
and a strong following, and no one man should have all that
power.

But, with all of that, one man can change the world.

Instead you waste the powerful opportunity and pollute the planet even more with your bickering, loud mouth, overgrown ego, annoying influence, and mission-less message.

You have no foundation on what it is exactly you were even
sent here to do for this planet with all that money of yours.

Fashion shows are not going to make the world a better place,
Mr. West.

You don’t have all of the answers.

Your priorities are warped by the Hollywood celebrities that
you’re surrounded by.

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re now living in a mad world that is falling apart, and your obsessive interest in fashion will not benefit anything meaningful to help humanity’s future in it.

It is a complete waste of time, but sadly, you probably will
never see yourself in this way.

Deep inside your incredibly large mind, the world is already
perfect and there is no need for any heroes.

And it is a pity that your blind sight will never allow you see just how empty your accomplishments really are for the future of our species.

You represent yourself as a man of class, yet, everything you say and do is the exact opposite of that, and for that, Anonymous would like to extend this sincere and jolly ‘f–k you.’

You will always be the hot-headed, Chicago-born, spoiled little brat that you are, and no expensive designer wear can ever cover that up.

Anonymous is sounding off the new Renaissance era this year for
humanity, and if you don’t shape up, then your legacy will not be
included.

Poor examples such as yourself will not be tolerated anymore in
the new age.”

We are Anonymous
We are Legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
You should've expected us!

The Israeli welfare state, once the envy of many countries (remember the kibbutz?) is falling apart.

All our social services are crumbling.

The money goes to the huge army, big enough for a medium power.

So does anyone suggest drastically reducing the military?

Of course not.

What, stick the knife in the backs of our valiant soldiers?

Open the gates to our many enemies? Why, that's treason!

So what do the politicians and the media talk about?

What is exciting the public mind?

What reaches the headlines and evening news?

Only the really serious matters.

Does the Prime minister's wife pocket the coins for returned bottles?

Does the Prime Minister's official residence show signs of neglect?

Did Sara Netanyahu use public funds to install a private hairdresser's room in the residence?

SO WHERE is the main opposition party, the Zionist Camp (a.k.a. the Labor Party)?

The party labors (no pun intended) under a great disadvantage: its leader is the Great Absent One of this election.

Yitzhak Herzog does not have a commanding presence.

Of slight build, more like a boy than a hardened warrior, with a thin, high voice, he does not seem like a natural leader.

Cartoonists have a hard time with him.

He does not have any pronounced characteristics that make him easily recognizable.

He reminds me of Clement Attlee. When the British Labor Party could not decide between two conspicuous candidates, they elected Attlee as the compromise candidate.

He, too, had no commanding features.

(Churchill again: An empty car approached and Major Attlee got out.)

The world gasped when the British, even before the end of World War II, kicked Churchill out and elected Attlee.

But Attlee turned out to be a very good Prime Minister.

He got out in time from India (and Palestine), set up the welfare state, and much more.

Herzog started out well.

By setting up a joint election list with Tzipi Livni he created momentum and put the moribund Labor Party on its feet again.

He adopted a popular name for the new list.

He showed that he could make decisions.

And there it stopped.

The Zionist Camp fell silent.

Internal quarrels paralyzed the election staff.

I published two articles in Haaretz calling for a joint list of the Zionist Camp, Meretz and Ya'ir Lapid's party.

It would have balanced the Left and the Center. It would have generated rousing new momentum. But the initiative could only have come from Herzog.

He ignored it. So did Meretz. So did Lapid. I hope they won't regret it.

Now Meretz is teetering on the brink of the electoral threshold, and Lapid is slowly recovering from his deep fall in the polls, building mainly on his handsome face.

In spite of everything, Likud and the Zionist camp are running neck and neck.

The polls give each 23 seats (of 120), predicting a photo finish and leaving the historic decision to a number of small and tiny parties.

THE ONLY game-changer in sight is the coming speech by Binyamin Netanyahu before the two Houses of Congress.

It seems that Netanyahu is pinning all his hopes on this event.

And not without reason.

All Israeli TV stations will broadcast the event live.

It will show him at his best. The great statesman, addressing the most important parliament in the world, pleading for the very existence of Israel.

Netanyahu is an accomplished TV personality.

He is not a great orator in the style of Menachem Begin (not to mention Winston Churchill), but on TV he has few competitors.

Every movement of his hands, every expression of his face, every hair on his head is exactly right. His American English is perfect.

The leader of the Jewish ghetto pleading at the court of the Goyish king for his people is a well-known figure in Jewish history.

Every Jewish child reads about him in school. Consciously or unconsciously, people will be reminded.

The chorus of senators and congress(wo)men will applaud wildly, jump up and down every few minutes and express their unbounded admiration in every way, except licking his shoes.

Some brave Democrats will absent themselves, but the Israeli viewers will not notice this, since it is the habit on such occasions to fill all empty seats with members of the staff.

No propaganda spectacle could be more effective.

The voters will be compelled to ask themselves how Herzog would have looked in the same circumstances.

I cannot imagine any more effective election propaganda.

Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius.

MILTON FRIEDMAN asserted that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this lunch has a high price indeed.

It means almost literally spitting in the face of President Obama.

I don't think there was ever anything like it.

The prime minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the capital of the US to openly challenge its President, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar.

His host is the opposition party.

Like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel's most vital interests for election victory.

For many years, Israeli ambassadors and other functionaries have toiled mightily to enlist both the White House and the Congress in the service of Israel.

When Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin came to Washington and found that the support for Israel was centered in the Congress, he made a large -- and successful -- effort to win over the Nixon White House.

AIPAC and other Jewish organizations have worked for generations to secure the support of both American parties and practically all senators and congress(wo)men.

For years now, no politician on Capitol Hill dared to criticize Israel.

It was tantamount to political suicide.

The few who tried were cast into the wilderness.

And here comes Netanyahu and destroys all of this edifice for one election spectacle.

He has declared war on the Democratic Party, cutting the bond that has connected Jews with this party for more than a century.

Destroying the bipartisan support.

Allowing Democratic politicians for the first time to criticize Israel.

Breaking a generations-old taboo that may not be restored.

President Obama, who is being insulted, humiliated and obstructed in his most cherished policy move, the agreement with Iran, would be superhuman if he did not brood on revenge.

Even a movement of his little finger could hurt Israel grievously.

Does Netanyahu care? Of course he cares. But he cares more about his reelection.

Much, much more.

Uri Avnery is a longtime Israeli peace activist. Since 1948 has advocated the setting up of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In 1974, Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with PLO leadership. In 1982 he was the first Israeli ever to meet Yassir Arafat, after crossing the lines in besieged Beirut. He served three terms in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), and is the founder of Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc).

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About Me

My name is Tony Whitcomb. I am a Social Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Expotera.
I created Expotera and this Blog, to teach Corporate America and our Government, a few basic lessons in Ethics, Honesty, Macro Economics and Social Justice.
Power To The People!!